Years after the Balkan conflicts, voters in former Yugoslav countries are still electing people who have been convicted of or charged with war crimes, showing how nationalism still distorts the political environment.

After accusations of genocide, ethnic cleansing, brutal detentions and a punishing siege, lawyers in the four-year trial of Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic begin to present their closing arguments next week.

Despite funding setbacks and broken promises of support, the War Childhood Museum will open in Sarajevo in December to exhibit people’s personal mementoes of growing up during the conflict, its director says.

After Gordana Tadic became Bosnia and Herzegovina’s new acting chief prosecutor, controversy erupted as the prosecution was accused of bias over the arrests of ten Bosnian Croats on war crimes charges.

The political storm caused by war crimes allegations against Croatia’s defence minister again raised uncomfortable questions for Zagreb about its military role in the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The recent arrests of ten former Bosnian Croat fighters from Orasje sparked protests, but they also revived bitter memories for a couple who are still seeking justice for the rape and torture they suffered during wartime.

The Croatian government’s furious response to the arrest of ten Bosnian Croats on war crimes charges in Bosnia and Herzegovina was diplomatically incompetent and will not help the suspects, analysts argue.

Belgrade is refusing to extradite three wanted Serbian Radical Party members to the Hague Tribunal, sparking claims that it’s trying to avoid the UN court hearing how PM Aleksandar Vucic was accused of witness intimidation.

If the new Hague-based Special Court indicts senior politicians for war crimes and political killings, it could bring down Kosovo’s governing coalition and undermine the major parties, experts suggest.

More than 1,000 women in Bosnia and Herzegovina who suffered sexual violence during the 1990s conflict cannot become mothers because of serious psychological traumas and the medical consequences of being raped.

About

The Balkan Transitional Justice initiative is a regional initiative which has been supported by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO and Robert Bosch Stiftung that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia).